Hide & Seek - James Patterson [10]
Will understood the difference—but he had made his choice about which he preferred.
On weekends, Will often took solitary walks around his neighborhood. One day, when he was eleven, he heard shouts coming from a stadium about a mile from his aunts' home. Intrigued, he went to investigate. He paid a week's pocket money to get in.
There, in front of him, was a perfectly dazzling sight: twenty-two men, divided in uniform but united in purpose, were playing what they called “football” in England, but what Will knew as soccer. Only on TV had he seen the game played this way.
He had played the game well at school, but felt it had been haphazard, just a bunch of boys kicking the ball around any way they could.
Here, there was symmetry, geometry, coordination in attack, a beauty as inevitable as the waves of the ocean. One man, controlling the ball with his feet, moved forward; another raced to his side; a third began a run down the wing, received the ball from the second man without breaking stride, and veered toward the center of the field, pursued by an opponent who dived at the attacker's feet and managed to push the ball to one of his teammates.
And then, suddenly, everything reversed, like the tide going out. Defenders became attackers, attackers defenders, a whirling mass; Will was reminded of a kaleidoscope his father had given him when he was five.
And the noise! Each time there was a reversal, each time one team threatened the goalkeeper, the crowd roared, as though they shared the breath coming out of the athletes' mouths, and when eventually a goal was scored, the roaring rose to such a pitch Will thought his ears would burst and his heart explode.
That night his mother came to him in his dream, and while he watched in horror, she kissed his father's open dead eyes, and laughed at Will. Her teeth were red, dripping blood.
You know what you did, Will.
It's all your fault.
One morning, several days later, he found a lost dog on the streets of Fulham. The dog was male, a tan-and-brown runaway. Finally, he had a pal in shitty old England.
“C'mon, dog. C'mon with me,” he said and patted the side of his thigh several times. “C'mon, Lassie.”
Will wandered into a municipal park and the lonely mutt followed like his shadow. He didn't know why he was feeling angry, but he was. The feeling came over him a lot actually, ever since he'd left California. Ever since his father had killed himself. His father's suicide was a really bad deal for Will. He still felt responsible, but even worse, he'd convinced himself that was how he himself would end up.
He sat down by a small pond. The dog was still with him. His new buddy.
Will finally shook his head at the mutt. “Big mistake, staying with me,” he said. “Bad luck follows me around. I'm not kidding.”
The dog gave a whimper, and put out its paw.
But Will was getting angrier about lots of things. His father, his aunts, Palmer. He felt as though he had a tight belt around his chest. His head was tingling. He was seeing mists of light red.
Will reached down into the cold, shallow water and pulled out a fist-sized stone. Without a hint of warning, he whacked the dog on the side of the head. He struck the dog a second time, and it fell over moaning. One sad, brown eye looked up at him. He kept hitting the dog until it was dead.
He didn't know why he'd done it. He liked the dog. At any rate, Will found that he wasn't angry anymore. He felt okay. Actually, he didn't feel much of anything.
He had even made a little self-discovery; there was a distinctly good part in him, but also a bad part.
There were two Wills, weren't there?
CHAPTER 8
WILL KNEW FROM the start that he had greatness in him, and that he wasn't really impressed by it. But others sure were.
Will Shepherd was the youngest ever to play for the Fulham School's first eleven. When he was just eleven, he persuaded the coach to let him train with the team; he was